In another version Althaimenes, not Katreus, consulted the oracle and was told he was fated to kill his own father, but this does not account for the flight of Apemosyne or the selling of Airope and Klymene by Katreus.
 
 
 
 

   The curious trick used by Hermes to catch Apemosyne is better understood if we infer that, in order to have freshly-flayed oxhides, he must have killed a bull, the symbol of paternal sexual power (especially in Cretan myth and cult).  In other words, Hermes kills a symbolic representation of Zeus, and then acts just like Zeus.  Zeus Atabyrios, to whom Althaimenes builds an altar, also seems to have been worshipped in the form of a bull; bronze statues of bulls on the mountain were said to bellow when danger approached.

   Getting rid of unwanted daughters (because they had lost their virginity, or posed a threat to their father) seems to be Nauplios' chief occupation.  He performs the same task for Aleos of Tegea, taking his daughter Auge to sell or drown because she had been deflowered by Herakles.

   Versions other than the usual one, that Airope married Atreus and their sins were Agamemnon and Menelaos, provide a good example of how varied (and confusing) our sources can be.  Sometimes Airope marries Pleisthenes (a brother of Atreus) and they have Agamemnon and Menelaos. or Airope and Atreus have a son Pleisthenes who marries Kleola and they have Agamemnon and Menelaos, or Atreus marries Kleola, they have a son Pleisthenes who marries Eriphyle and their children are Agamemnon and Menelaos.
 
 
 
 

   As Persson saw long ago, the myth of Glaukos is probably connected with a Cretan initiation ritual that simulated the death and resurrection of a boy at puberty; for example, Glaukos means "white" and the change from white to black shows that the boy must pass from his previous state to its opposite.  Whatever the validity of specific details like this, it is clear that the myth portrays the end of childhood play and indulgence (the pot of honey) as death.  The emergence of new life, a different state, (the resurrection of Glaukos) is accompanied by the same elements (a serpent and a magic plant) that are prominent in the classic story of the loss of innocence and transition to adulthood, the myth of the Garden of Eden.

   A similar story is told by Nonnos:  when the Lydian Tylos was killed by a poisonous serpent, his sister Moria asked the giant Damason for help; Damason killed the serpent with a tree, but the serpent's "wife" brought an herb, the "flower of Zeus," and put it in the dead serpent's nostril; when it revived, Moria picked the same herb and used it in the same way to bring her brother back to life.

   When Polyidos orders Glaukos to spit in his mouth, he is making him give back what he had received. 
   Apollo gave the gift of prophecy to the Trojan princess Kassandra on the condition that she would have sex with him.  When she refused, he spat in her mouth; the result was that she would continue to give true prophesies but no one would believe them.  Here spit, as often in myth and folklore, represents semen, and spitting is intercourse (that is why creator gods in many religions create by spitting on dry earth (the earth is female and the spit is male), and why we say that a son who looks like his father is his "spitting image,"  Apollo is gaining symbolically what Kassandra denied to him in reality, and the symbolic deflowering of the virgin prophetess is the reason her prophesies were not believed.  As Parke says, "The prevalence of the story shows that to the Greeks the gift of prophecy in a woman was associated with the idea of virginity and not with the position of consort to a god."
 
 
 

    Minos's son Katreus had three daughters (Airope, Klymene, Apemosyne) and a son Althaimenes.  When he asked the oracle how his life would end, he was told that one of his children would be the cause of his death.  He therefore hid the oracle in a secret place, but Althaimenes learned of it and, not wanting to be the killer of his father, went with his sister Apemosyne to a place in Rhodes which he called Kretinia.  From a mountain named Mount Atabyrion he could see all the way to Crete, and he erected there an altar to Zeus Atabyrios.

    The god Hermes was in love with Althaimenes' sister Apemosyne, but she was such a fast runner that even he could not catch her.  Therefore he lay some freshly-skinned oxhides on the path she took on her way back from a nearby spring, and when she slipped on the hides he raped her.  She told her brother what had happened, but he thought she was lying and kicked her to death.

    Katreus gave his daughters Airope and Klymene to Nauplios to drown (since they had been seduced by servants or foreigners) or to sell in foreign lands.  Nauplios himself married Klymene, and their sons were Oiax and Palamedes.  Airope was married to Atreus of Mycenae, and their sons were Agamemnon and Menelaos.

    When Katreus was an old man, he wanted to give his kingdom to his son Althaimenes, and so he went to Rhodes to find him.  Landing on Rhodes, Katreus and his crew got into a fight with local herdsmen, who thought they were invading pirates.  Katreus tried to explain who he was, but his words were drowned out by the barking of the herdsmen's dogs.  Althaimenes arrived, but did not recognize his father and killed him with a spear.  When he learned what he had done, he prayed to the gods and then threw himself into a deep chasm.
 
 

    When Minos' son Glaukos was a young child, he chased a mouse and fell into a pot of honey and died.  Minos searched everywhere for his missing son, and gathered a crowd of seers and fortune-tellers to help him.  On the advice of the Kouretes or the Delphic oracle, he asked all the seers to describe a certain tri-colored cow in his herds (or a cow whose color changed daily from white to red to black) and, when Polyidos compared the cow to a mulberry, Minos sent him to look for Glaukos.  Polyidos found Glaukos in the honey pot, but then Minos ordered him to restore the boy to life and locked up the seer with the corpse.

    While Polyidos was imprisoned, a serpent entered and Polyidos threw a stone at it and killed it.  Another serpent appeared, saw the first one dead, and left.  Soon the second serpent returned with a certain herb, which it placed over the body of the first, who immediately came back to life.  Amazed by this, Polyidos put the herb on the body of Glaukos, and the boy also came back to life. 

    Minos ordered Polyidos to teach his magic power to Glaukos before he could leave Crete.  Polyidos did so, but as he was leaving he ordered Glaukos to spit in his mouth.  When the boy did this, he immediately forgot what he had learned.